Who Cares Tour: Meet Young Adult Carer Paige

Hello my name is Paige, I’m a young adult carer from Salford. I’m one of the fortunate four that is involved in the Who Cares project with Salford young carers and the Lowry. Who cares is a piece of verbatim theatre based on 12 months of interviews and workshops. The project started as a one night only performance that would be shown to councillors and important decision makers from the city. The show had such a great response that, it has been able to go on tour.

The project has been a huge milestone for us as young carers to talk about our lives, the differences and similarities between us, it certainly makes you feel like you have a group of people you can rely on and gives you the confidence to talk to different people. Being involved in this project has also taught me a lot about theatre and the process of putting a performance together.

Who cares has been an amazing opportunity to help raise awareness and understanding of young carers and some of the issues they face. the show may be able to help identify other young people with caring responsibilities and get them the support that they need. One thing I hope does come from who cares? Being shown to other cities and other people is I hope other services are developed to give the best support they can, we are lucky in Salford that young carers have a great service, I know in other places young people aren’t as lucky. Finishing the tour at the house of Lords is a really exciting opportunity, the chance for the MPs to see a piece of theatre that we have developed, based on our lives is amazing, but more importantly if it makes them think about what they can change for young people all over the country to make life a little easier than it will be such an achievement.